Alternative Rock
by Kilted Minku
Summary: Dizzy finally sets off into the real world, only to stumble onto a plot to take it over! not as cliche as it sounds, trust me. First chapter up, AU fic, and my first fanfic, so pleeze r&r! Dizzy/Millia yuri


Guilty Gear X: Alternative Rock. (AU warning!!)

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Here's the lowdown. This fic uses the characters and basic story of GGX, but changes a LOT of things in various areas. Consider it the alternative story (hence the title). I'm doing this for many reasons: 1. I don't want to write the same story everyone else does, 2. I think its fun to see known characters take on completely different personalities, and 3. eh, one and two were good enough. For the sake of those who don't want to see their favorite characters changed (and I respect that, you inflexible bastards ^_^) I'm going to list the major changes here before the story begins.

Characters:

This story focuses mainly on two people, Dizzy and Millia Rage. Expect them to have more than just a friendly relationship by the end of the story ^-^. If anyone has any beef about the lesbian issue, point it elsewhere. I've read way too many Sol and Ky fics, I need a break. I realize people tend to like pairing Dizzy with more playful individuals like May (props to Kaiser _for his darkest body brightest soul fic!) but I wanted to give this a try. Remember, this is an alternative story. Other key players will Include Faust, who will remain mostly unchanged from his original story, and Testament, who will be almost completely different from his original story. This is a warning for hardcore testament fans; expect drastic changes in both his and Dizzy's stories. Major players will be Zappa, May and Johnny. Their stories will also be changed, though their personalities will stay mostly the same. Expect guest appearances from the other characters whenever I get bored of the plot._

Main story:

We've got some major changes here too. You've been warned.

Wellllll, I've held you long enough. I hope everyone enjoys this; I'll try to keep it interesting. Have fun! Oh, and please, respond! This being my first time, I appreciate all the feedback I can get. Just try not to smack me around too badly.

~minku

~ =thought

" =speech

Prologue

"You'll take care of her?"

"Of course."

"We _both_ will."

"He knows that. Be still."

"You'll be all she has; I can't be here for her..."

"We know. Were prepared."

........

"You'll...tell her the things I told you to.."

"Everything's going to be taken care of. Don't let it trouble you."

"I will protect her."

"_We _will protect her"

..................

"She needs to live..."

"She will. I swear it."

"Not in this hole, Necro. Let her _live._"

"......."

"She will, I'll see to that."

..................

"Then it is done. I...I have to leave...now."

"It will be as you said."

"God speed, to wherever you're going."

"I've had my fill of god. Ill not have him hovering over my shoulder anymore."

"Then this is goodbye"

"Yes."

"We understand."

"And so will she."

"Maybe one day. Goodbye, both of you. Thank you"

"Goodbye, Testament."

CHAPTER ONE

~First there was God. And god made man. No no no, that isn't right. Backwards. Man made God. Man made God, and man made Gears. No, that's _still_ not right. There has to be a reason, right? Man made gears to fight for man. Tsk...there's something missing. Man made Gears...and they were gods?...no...Dammit, start over.~

Dizzy leaned back and retraced the tree in her mind, not expecting a solution. It was an idle thought process, devoid of any real effort. Undine had assured her that there was no real answer, and Necro swore up and down that the whole thing was useless and humans were damned anyway. Necro had a thing with damning things. Dizzy however was never satisfied until she had proven something three different ways and felt it for herself. This being no exception, she continued to file it through her mind every now and then, always adding more to the equation.

~Why did they do it?~ She asked herself. As usual, the answer didn't waltz up and present itself on a platter. Her face calm but inquisitive, she reached down and extracted a slim book from a worn leather pack lounging on rock near where she was sitting. In times like these, it was always best to consult the experts. Lacking anyone that fit the description; Dizzy turned to literature for a second opinion. She opened the old notebook with practiced care, and began to read.

~2160: Worldsgear Enterprises, through scientific speculation, tests, observation and a great deal of caffeine, announces its discovery of what is at this point believed to be the singular gene responsible for adaptive mutation in human beings.

2162: Project JUSTICE is go. In the interests of science, the project, which would have been illegal due to government anti-cloning laws currently in place, is cleared as a black op. It's files, crew and entire existence are made invisible. It's so much easier to fuck with nature when big brother's not breathing down your neck.

Dizzy smiled. The notebook was laced with sarcasm, the man who wrote it being an ex-Worldsgear scientist with a dim view of his company's work. Dizzy considered it to be a fairly reliable source of information, but it was important to not let its writer's pessimism sway one's thinking. The first time she read it Undine spent half an hour lecturing her on interpreting human emotion in literature. Necro simply dammed it to hell. But then, Necro had a thing with damning things.

~2168: The first gear is born. Everyone is ecstatic, and I must admit, this creature is beyond amazing. It's also beyond terrifying. Plans have been set in motion to create a computer program capable of broadcasting a signal that will stimulate a gland in the gear's brain causing mindless obedience. Worldsgear plans on selling them to governments around the globe. The universal, undefeatable soldier. I'm worried. The gear's purpose is to fight man's wars so they won't have to, but I shiver at the thought of them being loose and on their own. We've created a god, what happens if it doesn't like us?

2172: Justice, the computer program created to control the gears, has been completed. It's a technological wonder in and of itself. Keeping to WG's long running history of throwing law out the window, we've created a machine with the closest thing to a human brain we could grow in whatever second rate black market test tube we could procure. Time restraints and budget cuts are forcing corners to be cut. Important corners. Every day my hope for this project drops and my fear of it rises. I'd quit, but they'd probably have to kill me.

~I could be wrong, child, but I'm fairly certain the human who wrote this hasn't come back and changed the words since the last time you memorized it~ Necro said, an obvious drawl of annoyance in his "voice". Dizzy smiled. ~I don't see what's so funny, Dizzy. I put up with your constant thinking fairly well, I'd say. But this same topic running through your head over and over,~ Necro harrumphed, ~It makes me sick. Quit making so much noise, people live in here!~ Dizzy snickered and turned the page. Necro had been on edge as of late, but Dizzy didn't blame him. There was going to be a profound change in all their lives soon, and Necro was only venting his grievances. Dizzy was going to leave the grove.

She'd made the decision a week ago, after thinking it over for a good month before that. The month may well have been the better half of a year for Dizzy. Now three and a half years old, with the mind of 20 year old with the best education money could buy and perhaps the most powerful body on what was left of the earth, Dizzy had come to the conclusion that she had hidden from humanity for long enough. She had an insatiable want to know everything possible about the people who hated her so much, and she wasn't going to learn any more huddled away in seclusion. It had been a hard decision, and an even harder argument.

~Don't be a FOOL, child! You represent hell on earth to those..._things_,~ The entire concept had put so much strain on Necro that his wing had distorted into a shape usually reserved for ink blot tests. The person taking it would've declared it road kill without a second thought. ~Calm down, Necro..~ Undine had said, ~We knew she wouldn't stay here forever. We'll be there every step of the~

~You too!??? Have you taken entire leave of your senses?!!! They won't stop with KILLING her undine! We swore to PROTECT her, not hand her to the enemy!~

~The war is OVER, Necro!~ Undine fumed, ~We also said we wouldn't stop her form living her life as she saw fit!~

~Funny, I figured getting her killed interfered with her life pretty badly!~

The argument had spanned a day and a half, and left Dizzy with a bigger headache than the time she'd asked them to show her what sex was. That one hadn't ended until she'd threatened to go find out for herself if they didn't shut up. She never actually learned the answer until she happened upon an old book with a pink cover and the title _Claim My Wild Heart_. About halfway through reading it she began wishing her threat hadn't worked.

Coming out of her thoughts, Dizzy returned to the notebook. Times had been more than a little stressful lately, and with less than a day left before she planned on setting out Dizzy found herself overcome with an urge to review everything she ever learned in the grove. You can never go home again.

~2173: It's begun. Justice is now in full control, and the gears have been spread across the globe. Man now possesses the greatest weapon since the nuclear bomb, and I'm sure they're eager to play with their new toys. I'm going to take my wife out to dinner tonight. Twice. I may never be able to do it again.~

There was one more entry, written in a scrawl. Dizzy closed the book, she didn't need to read it. The words were forever imbedded in her head. She closed her eyes.

~2175: Justice has released them. The gears are free. I can hear them, crashing through the complex, screaming, ripping, raging. I'm going to die here. I love you Marie. Please forgive me.~

Dizzy's eyes eased open. The midday sun bathed the grove in an unearthly beauty, which was appropriate giving that the grove was most certainly not of this world. The soft sound of falling water could be heard, a byproduct of the constant waterfall that emerged from nowhere and spilled into a crystal well 6 feet in diameter. Dizzy had been to the bottom before; it went down 30 feet and emerged in a chamber made entirely of glass. With the water being so clear it was nearly impossible to determine where the fluid ended and the solid began. On hot summer days it was a wonderful retreat, the sunlight filtering through the water made the entire room glow. Dizzy's eyes wandered about, taking in all that was her home, trying to remember every last detail. She looked toward the drakeling to her left as it stirred from its nap, repositioned itself, and flopped down again. It made her smile. It was a lazy beast, and she loved it dearly. Any human would have named it, but Dizzy refused to give it a name that may not be its own. To her, a name was a window to ones being. It was a thing to be treasured, and she felt wrong forcing one onto another living being.

The drakeling rested under the shrine, the generic title Dizzy had given the beautiful marble building that stood near the center of the grove. As far as she knew, it served no purpose that would justify its name, but the structure radiated a feeling of calm contemplation and it seemed appropriate. Atop its columns were ancient sculpture of angels of old, carved by an unknown hand. Dizzy had always wondered who they were. She unconsciously flipped a small rock into the stream across from her, a result of the constant overflow of the well. The stone skipped twice before settling on the bottom. The stream disappeared into a cave, more a tunnel really, and recycled into air via a waterfall. the water never reached the ground once it began to fall, it just gradually disappeared. There was an outcropping halfway down where Dizzy took her showers. The water was always lukewarm. it was nice in the summer, but in the winters Dizzy was forced to divert the water through an artificial channel she herself had built. it carried the stream over rocks superheated by fires that blazed beneath them. It was an effective system, but an annoyance when you were cold and tired. As if anything wasn't.

Dizzy rose to her feet and glided toward the library. ~You need to stop doing that, Dizzy,~ Undine remarked, ~humans don't glide, they walk.~

"Sorry." Dizzy said softly, and corrected her movement accordingly. Undine was right, if Dizzy planned to live beyond her first few days in the world of humans, she needed to act a little more, well, human. All it took was one mistake to give it all away. One slip, and it could all be over. All things considered, Dizzy was, as Necro had at one point put it, walking into a death trap. However, giving the other option of living her life sad and alone, never seeing what there was beyond the walls of her own little world, never getting the answers to her questions, never feeling what it was to love and be loved, Dizzy found herself firm in her decision. She'd rather die in a world that hated her than live a prisoner of her own fear.

She only wished it didn't sound so morbid.

Dizzy knew more about the world outside than she would admit to were one to engage her in a causal conversation. Her reluctance to secure any opinions about it came from Dizzy's inborn need to experience things for herself before coming to conclusions about them. So rather than form biases, Dizzy resolved to set goals and strive to complete them. It was her hope that, in the process, she would learn what it was to be human. She had vetoed writing a list, concluding that it would limit her scope to much, and as a result was marching into a situation with no particular plan for the first time in her life. There were key points though, things she was determined to accomplish. She wanted to know what had caused Justice to malfunction. She wanted to return the notebook to Marie (Undine had warned her that this was a noble effort but a bad idea. Necro had damned whoever Marie was to hell earlier anyway, and as such didn't voice an opinion). She wanted to see the world. She wanted to make a friend.

She also wanted to fall in love, but figured she'd put that one on hold for a while.

The sun began to set beyond the walls of the shrine, pulling the colors of the grove into the sky and tumbling them around for Dizzy's enjoyment. "My last sunset..." She mused. For a while there was no answer. Surprisingly, it was Necro who entered her mind with a reply.

~The sun still sets beyond these walls, Dizzy.~ he said calmly. Dizzy listened attentively; it was rare for Necro to speak in such a manner. He loved Dizzy dearly, but the possessed wing had a tendency to be a little pessimistic. ~This won't be your last sunset.~

For a while Dizzy sat and watched, tracing the colors with her finger and trying to commit them to memory. So many things that were so trivial before now were so important. She breathed the twilight air into herself and let it out slowly. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would take on the world.

She was ready.

**********************************************************

It's not easy running from death for a living, it tends to wear on the nerves a bit. Truth be told, it really sucks, and isn't generally recommended to the casual family man or good Samaritan. It takes a very special kind of person to shoulder the stress of being constantly hunted without utterly breaking down. One well trained in the art of fighting, running and dealing with pressure. Thankfully, there were simple cures for the last problem: alcohol and masturbation.

Millia Rage was partaking in one and wishing she had time for the other when the idle chitchat of a fellow taverngoer reached her ears. There were people out there in the world who shun easdropping as an invasion of privacy and a general act of immaturity. There were also people who paid attention to everything they possibly could. Those people usually lived longer. Millia was one of the latter, and as she raised her vodka to her lips she let her senses drift into her neighbor's conversation.

".....think thier still around?"

"Of _course_ they are! Think about it, is Worldsgear was going to spend so much money developing the bastards, don't you think they'd come up with some kind of backup plan?"

"But they were all destroyed, there's satellites in orbit all over the sky searching for them! None of them have found anything more than ghost signals."

" *hic* you really think they were _ghost_ signals!!?? Think about it! One gear can wipe out a whole friggin _army_, don't you think they would've found a way to trick the satellites?" There was a pause as the drunken speaker's companion fretted over this. Millia downed the rest of her glass. Gears were the last of her problems, after all.

In her own humble opinion, Gears were hardly to blame for the war that had leveled the world. They would never had existed if not for humanities own need to find new and exciting ways to die. Millia found her energy was much more useful if spent trying to outsmart mankind _before_ they acted rather than fight off their creations. She let out a long sigh and poured herself another glass. Of course, things didn't always go as planned.

An ex-KGB assassin in a post-apoctiliptic world is a sought after individual, and as millia had discovered, people were willing to pay a great deal for the services of a professionally trained killer. Millia had never liked it. She wasn't a huge fan of death, money or shady individuals, but the line of work Russia had trained her for involved a great deal of all three. She sighed. With the government changed and the files forgotten, one would think Millia Rage could live her life in peace. Instead, she became trapped in what had started as a gang war and escalated into a living nightmare. But, such is life.

Millia had never had the luxury of walking the easy street, and she was hardly delusional enough to expect her luck to change now. At five years old she was adopted into the WISP program, a genetically enhanced experimental Russian Special Forces group that was a devision of the KGB. It purposes was to protect Russia and its allies from aggressor nations that may be using new and unorthodox weaponry. They were also the folks Russia sent in if they needed someone to kill and wanted to be discreet about it. Eventually it became an anti-gear rapid deployment assault squadron, but by then Millia had long sence left. Recruited by computer based on her rare blood type, Millia hadn't exactly been given a choice in her employment. Her family had been treated chemically in the hopes that someone with her blood type would be borne, and it had succeeded. She was given away with little resistance.

Russian scientists had been working overtime with the help of several other superpowers to create a virus capable of altering and enhancing human DNA, and the end result was a unique little bug called H14. It had a lifespan of exactly one hour, during which time it dramatically and permanently altered the dna of its host. The initial results were disturbing to say the least. Time and experimentation eventually perfected the H14 virus into something far less dramatic but equally effective. It now only altered one part of its host, and did so in a way that was normally not very noticeable. Side effects were prevalent, including but not limited to insanity, loss of brain or muscle function, and the occasional death. The solution was simple: If the virus were given to someone of a single, rare blood type, it would work its magic without all those nasty, expensive little problems. WISP was created, and the search for ideal hosts began.

The reluctant assassin idley stirred her drink with a toothpick, lost in her own little world. ~s'alright,~ she thought, ~better in here than out there.~ These days though, that statement had held far less truth than it had in the past. Millia downed her bitter nostalgia with the last of her vodka and fished her tender out of an inner coat pocket, life was too short to waste away in the confines of things long past. She stepped tentatively out of the bar, sighing contently as the cool night air hit her in force. She savored it for a moment, letting it caress her alcohol softened senses, and for one brief moment, flirted with the idea that just maybe, _maybe_ this world wasn't so bad after all.

That clinched it. "I've had waaaay too much to drink..." she muttered, and with a remorseful sigh she let flow her golden locks. In a tumbling flood of aureate waves her hair fell free of its bonds and cascaded downward, coming to a rest with its ends at her feet. Millia raised her hands, arms spread, and set her mind. Her hair lifted from the ground of its own accord, fanning out in a crescent of solid gold. Through it she filtered her body, expelling all the toxins she'd just finished consuming in the form of a smooth, alcoholic vapor. Anything that may have impaired her, anything than taxed her body more than needed, all was swept up by the wind and carried off into the night. Her body purged, millia let her hands fall. It was wonderful fix, but it couldn't solve everything. Curling her hair into a more manageable size, Millia set off toward her hotel, the promise of a warm shower and a soft bed after a week of solid travel pushing her forward despite the complaints of her tired legs. The manager, who's head was hidden by a newspaper, paid her little mind as she walked in and made her way toward the stairs. ~Probably used to midnight arrivals~ she thought, glancing about the lobby as she picked up her room number from the hook and slid her money across the table to the newspaper cloaked inn keeper. He didn't look up from his paper, but idly fingered the cash before depositing in a box next to loosely arranged keys. The whole possess had the feel of years of experience, and Millia guessed he could tell the bills were real from weight and texture alone. As he reached for a key, Millia let her eyes drift to the picture on the newspaper's front. The headline was a bold, almost obnoxiously attention grabbing black font that read: EVIDENCE OF HIDDEN GEAR! It was centered over a poorly developed, low quality image of a winged figure sitting on a stone atop a hill. The face was barely visible, the body hidden in a mix of shadow and poor photography so only the outline remained. Millia focused on the face, trying to pick out details. There was something....something so...

The innkeeper cleared his thought, bringing Millia jolting back into reality, and handed her a key. "Thanks." She said softly, surprised at her own behavior, and took the key as she turned toward the stairs. She was three steps up when the Innkeeper spoke. "Dangerous times..." he said, peering over his paper, "pretty young lady like yourself would do well not to travel alone." There was no mockery in his tone, but rather a sound of general concerned. Millia looked halfway over her shoulder. "Ill be all right," she said off handedly and waved toward his newspaper. "I'd say people have bigger things to worry about." Not interested in extending the conversation any longer (it didn't help that her legs were about to give out from exhaustion) Millia completed her trek up the stairs and into her room, locking the door behind her.

And at that moment, in a dark room of a dark building continents away, one finger threw one switch on one consol. Power surged through a machine that, despite being freshly constructed, had but one task set down for it decades ago. On a small display, a series of numbers appeared. Below it, scrawled onto a post-it note, were three simple words.

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"Recalled to life"

The countdown to the end of the world had begun.

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Minku's afterthoughts.

yeah yeah, I know: "hes talking AGAIN?" c'mon guys, let me have my fun!

well there you have it: the first chapter of my first fanfic. Id love any R&R you guys have!

some other news: the Kaiser has joined forces with me! woot! any fans of Darkest body Brightest soul, keep your eyes peeled. Hes a wee bit busy right now, but soon enough he'll be writing companion chapters for alternative rock (im using "he" as a generic term, i try not to guess at the genders of my online friends, but its kind of weird to refer to my fellow writer as "it" *sweat drop*)

more to come!


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